As the world shifts away from burning dirty energy sources, companies are also creating more efficient electric home appliances to replace traditional models.
Cala, for example, has created an innovative smart heat pump water heater that learns your home's hot water usage patterns to optimize energy usage, on top of the energy savings from a heat pump system.
Heat pumps work by transferring heat, as opposed to how traditional models burn dirty energy sources to generate heat — which often results in energy being lost to the environment. Heat pumps effectively capture heat from the surrounding environment, such as the air outside your house, and send it inside to warm an area.
Heat pump water heaters operate similarly, except the heat is transferred from the immediate room to a storage tank to heat the water inside it. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heat pump water heaters are most effective when placed inside a room with excess heat (such as a furnace room) or in locations that maintain a temperature between 40 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heat pump water heaters can lower your energy bills. When you upgrade to a Cala smart water heater, you could save over $5,000 over the product's lifetime, according to the company. As an example outlined by Cala, a family of four in North Carolina could also get an average of $1,050 in federal tax credits.
With state and local rebates and federal tax credits, you also can purchase and install an energy-efficient heat pump water heater like Cala's at a discounted upfront cost. Simultaneously, this switch to an electric appliance helps lower the overall carbon footprint of your home, which reduces the amount of planet-warming and toxic gases pushed into the atmosphere by older appliances.
However, these federal incentives may not be around forever. President Trump has frequently discussed eliminating the subsidies, which would require an act of Congress.
If you plan to make the switch to an energy-efficient heat pump water heater, it may be wise to act now while these federal incentives still exist.
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